Tourniquet
by zakhad
Summary: Janeway comes home. Then she comes back emotionally.


_second intermission, anticipation_

_you know the third act_

_small talk drops out of the play _

_you're standing in the lobby_

_tightening your tourniquet_

_waiting for it_

_waiting for it _

_\- ani difranco -_

The apartment is close to Command, high off the ground. She stares out the windows and wonders if she had the right equipment if she could escape that way. If after cutting a hole in the transparent aluminum she could rappel down thirty-six floors, disturbing families at dinner with the tap of her boots against their living rooms, causing all the people in the shining building across the street to rush to their windows and wonder who that person in black was. If she could, once on the ground, disappear anonymously into the bustle of San Francisco. A garret - that's what she needed. She could be an unappreciated artist. An author. Pen adventure novels under a pseudonym. Acton Bell, or Currer, perhaps, in homage to the Brontes. Cut her hair. Dye it. Wear loose flowing clothing. Or none - there was a nudist colony up the coast. Surely no one would know her without the uniform.

The annunciator sounds quietly - it's too polite. She searched for a way to turn up the volume or make the noise something other than gentle bells, but the house computer is too stupid and there are no manual interfaces anywhere. They probably had trouble with people turning them up too loud and disturbing the neighbors, thanks to the thin walls. Her neighbor to the left is an elderly gentleman with some tie to Starfleet, the elderly she guesses from seeing him at his door, the Starfleet connection from the fact that he lives in this building. Her neighbor to the right has not made an appearance in the corridor during those few times she's left the apartment.

She has only been in this sterile little box for a week. In that time, she has been out more than in, busy with meetings and debriefings. And parties. God, she hated the parties most.

The chiming annoys her again. She goes to the door and activates the tiny screen. The person outside does not look familiar to her. Still, if he gained entry to this building, he must be Starfleet. "Who is it?"

The bluish simalcrum of a two-inch-tall man frowns. "Beverly?"

"I'm sorry, no."

"Sor- " She cuts off the apology with a stab of her thumb, turning off the viewer, and returns to the windows. She wishes they were made of old-fashioned glass.

The following morning, she rises late, dresses in her uniform in anticipation of a visitor she knows she will not receive but anticipates anyway, and makes coffee, careful to shake all the grounds from the mill. Beans are expensive, but she has years of back pay, but her mother's thrifty housewifeliness made a lasting impression, as did long months of rationing in the Delta Quadrant. The scones she replicates, as well as jam and clotted cream.

At the clear round table for four someone placed in a corner near the windows, she sips and mechanically spreads condiments and watches for signs of life outside. Birds. Clouds moving in the blue sky. Amazing how the one-way trans-aluminum allows her to see undiluted colors.

"Computer, play music, classical, Mahler," she announces to the air. "Same selection as last request. Full volume."

The house computer is dumber than sterilized dirt. "The lease agreement you signed on -"

"Computer. Full volume."

Ensigns blanched and scurried at that tone. Aliens raised shields when she used that tone. Her apartment's manifestation of the central computer of the Ninth Street Apartments reiterated in the same bland, cheerful, feminine cooing, "The lease agreement - "

"Computer, shut up! Play the music as loud as you can!" Mahler pours from the sound system, but not loud enough to do it justice. She puts down her coffee and razes the walls with her eyes. High on one bleached wall, along the edge of the corner leading into the hallway to the rooms, she sees a hairline fissure.

In the second bedroom, her things remained packed away in cases, but now she tears through them with purpose. She liberates her tool kit from the bottom of a case of clothing and pulls a chair from the table. The panel had been painted over. A familiar interface panel, the usual standard-issue color scheme, lurks behind it. She smiles, for the first time in days, without thinking about it.

Two days later, she comes home from a solid eight hours of meetings and confrontations to the empty apartment. She leaves the lights off - one of her first modifications was the lights, to turn off the attentive illumination each time she entered a room - and goes to the windows. It's newly-dark, the stars beginning to show, and a slice of moon may show soon around the building across the street.

"Computer, play my selection of favorites, in random order. And start the coffee maker."

"Yes, ma'am," the new voice, a mid-range alto, still feminine, replies. And it complies. The music drowns out the soft percolating noises from the kitchenette. She closes her eyes and lets T'Shalin remind her that there is still beauty in the universe. When the piece, from Vulcan's post-reformation, pre-spaceflight period, is through lulling her into thoughtless nirvana and remembered views of space from her ready room window as the ship carried them through nebulas, the Mahler begins. The computer knows to raise the volume now without her demanding it.

She sees the windows shimmer as they vibrate under the waves of thundering horns and drums, and she opens her arms to the heavens to ride the tempo as her heart matches it. Her hands spread along the trans-aluminum, which is cold against her palms. She leans, her arms slowly spreading further, until her cheek meets the cold, and she imagines the vacuum of space, stars displayed in astrometrics, spinning at her command, showing their worlds to her.

There is a new rhythm in this familiar piece. She realizes that it is not part of the music. "Computer, music off," she shouts, and off it goes, the silence falling so abruptly it felt solid. The pounding continues, and the new door chime, very like that of a starship's annunciator, is going off.

She expects the elderly man, but it's a woman. "Who's there?" she calls through the speaker, as if she'd been doing nothing at all to attract attention.

"Your neighbor. Open the damned door!"

She looks again at the tiny blue screen. A thin woman, straight hair barely shoulder length. Wearing a loose robe tied tightly at the waist. Hands loose at her sides. Staring earnestly into the sensor bulb over the door, eyes wide.

When the door opens, it reveals what the monitor doesn't - the robe is a brilliant satin, in robin's-egg blue; the eyes, also blue; the hair, a red shade with more copper than her own. "How did you do it?" the woman asks at normal volume. Her voice is a high alto, clear, pleasant, excited.

"Do what?"

Thin lips tighten. "Get around the computer. And can you do it to mine? The damned replicator won't make my tea hot enough!"

She realizes that she is smiling at this stranger, and is pleased when her neighbor returns the smile tentatively. She holds out a hand. "Kathryn."

"Beverly," the neighbor replies, taking the hand and looking relieved. Her eyes shift from Kathryn's face for the first time, to peer over her shoulder. "Oh - is that coffee? How do you get it to smell like that from the replicator?"

"I don't. I have a coffee maker. Would you like a cup?"

Those blue eyes return to meet Kathryn's, and the tentativeness falls away. "I'd absolutely love a cup. Thanks."

Mornings, she remembers Beverly's eyes over the rim of a cup, the movement of Beverly's lips as she chatted about her Nana or her deceased parents, traded recipes, or catted about various personnel at the Starfleet Medical branch in which she worked. Kathryn lets the memory of conversations drift away as she left the apartment building, knowing they would return on the way up through floor after floor in the lift at the end of the day.

Beverly confessed early that she really had intended to berate her about the volume of the music. She'd met Kathryn's eyes and changed her mind. Kathryn had invitations to visit others, now that most of her crew had gone through the initial closed-doors counseling sessions and debriefings and emerged to seek lodging, if they weren't leaving for their homes already. Tom Paris had an apartment on the forty-third floor of her building. B'Elanna moved in with him two days later, after the Maquis had finally been pardoned officially. In transition, the couple had themselves, their baby, their few cases of belongings, and no idea of where they wanted to live. Kathryn decided to politely decline to visit, though she thought of the baby and smiled.

Three weeks home. One week spending evenings, in her apartment or next door, swapping favorite recipes with a doctor whose dossier listed chief of Starfleet Medical and chief medical officer of the flagship of the fleet. A husband, long deceased, a son, grown and gone. It occurs to Kathryn to ask about these things but she doesn't. Beverly doesn't ask about what Kathryn will do. In fact, they have never exchanged last names. Kathryn is certain Beverly knows exactly who and what she is, where she has been. Everyone in the quadrant knows. She had to look up Beverly's record, but she only glanced at the highlights of it in boldface, the bare listings of 'posted' and the scant statistics at the top. Widowed. Mother. Older than Kathryn, but not incredibly so. Not as old as Gretchen Janeway.

Her mother hasn't called since the awkward good-bye a week and a half ago. Gretchen wanted her to come home with her. Kathryn had almost promised it - suddenly, in spite of fond thoughts of home not several days before, the prospect repulsed her, and she exclaimed against it too vehemently. Out of astonishment at herself for behaving that way, but her mother read it wrong. She apologized. The damage was done. Kathryn planned to go, but wasn't sure when, and didn't look forward to it. Part of her musing melancholia had gone to feeling guilt over that odd situation.

Then Beverly. She carries the sack of groceries like a child on her hip and strides down the hall from the lift. There's a man outside Beverly's door, hand on the button. The same man who'd come looking for her and rung Kathryn's door instead. He glances at her in passing, then does a double take. "Captain?"

"Are you looking for Doctor Crusher?" She passes him and the door, recognizing her with an imperceptible retina scan, opens before her. She pauses. He's young. Did they make officers that young? His uniform claims he's likely one of Beverly's underlings, a lieutenant. She wonders if he gapes so openly at admirals in the lab.

"I'm. . . supposed to bring this to her. It's a report." The padd would have dents from his fingers any time now.

Kathryn smiles benevolently. "You could give it to me, if you want. I'll probably see her later." He hesitates, an animal caught in a snare, eyes almost popping from his head, and she finds that either disturbing or amusing - is Beverly that much of a dictator, or is this boy frightened of the mysterious and tough Captain Janeway who single-handedly towed her crippled vessel back from the Delta Quadrant?

He edges to her one half-step at a time and passes her the padd, careful not to touch her fingers. She's tempted to hiss at him, or lunge and grab his arm. Just to see him scream and run in terror.

In her kitchenette, she puts away groceries and puts the padd on her counter. It's tempting to look at it, but it's none of her business. But Beverly's never said what she does in the research branch at Starfleet Medical. She realizes as she finishes a quick stir fry that if this had anything to do with work, the kid would have delivered the report there. Curiosity prickles. She calls for music.

One last toss of the vegetables, and she slides the contents of the wok into a bowl. This is the only thing she can cook well. She eats quickly, not puritan enough to use chopsticks - maybe with noodles but not with rice - and throws the dishes in the recycler, wok and all. The crashing of Mahler covers the clatter she makes doing it. Turning from the task, she jumps - Beverly has come in unheard and stands waiting to be noticed.

Kathryn shouts down the music. "Why do you like it that loud?" Beverly rubs an ear.

"A lieutenant was trying to deliver that." The padd makes an excellent excuse not to discuss Mahler. Suddenly, curtains fall. Beverly snatches up the padd as if reclaiming an object of shame, clutches it to her with tightening fingers, then relaxes and tries to be normal again. Her eyes can't seem to meet Kathryn's.

This is spinning out of her control somehow, and in her mind's eye she sees Beverly turning to go, never to return. "I fell in love with my first officer," she announces point blank. It was something she'd never told anyone, even herself. But it came out like a comment on the ambient temperature of the room.

Beverly shares, in those seconds, the wide-eyed snared look of the lieutenant in the hall. Before she can unfreeze, Kathryn continues. "Once, a long time ago. It wasn't workable. We're still friends, but not of a sort that might be lovers - he's long since moved on. He's seeing S - Annika Hansen, in fact."

Beverly blinks, the first time since the announcement. And the padd hangs forgotten from her fingers.

"It's impossible, you know. To be captain and remain in control while intimately involved with someone under your command, it's a crisis of loyalties. Once you start thinking about it, the possibilities erode your inner peace, and it's impossible to - it's not easy to turn it off, once you've thought of it. But it's easier than being stranded on a ship for seven years with no reprieve and a first officer who was a criminal and yet was also your lover for a while. I thought it would take decades to get back, and the prospect of sharing command with an ex-lover just. . . ." The words fail her.

They stand in the silence, the smell of broccoli and sprouts and hot oil filling the air where words would not rise. Kathryn felt that ounce of control spin off with the telling of that secret - Beverly could sell that to a tabloid tomorrow, if she had a whim. She has forgotten how to socialize with other women. She couldn't sidle into intimate conversation like she had heard her mother do with friends - no, she had to jump in with both feet and plunge into the depths.

"Would you like something to eat?" That was better. Back on familiar territory.

"I didn't fall in love with him," Beverly says.

"Him," Kathryn repeats stupidly, stunned that her clumsy attempt at edging closer to a deeper friendship might gain a response. The blue eyes dive into the padd in her hand, her thumb moving to turn it on, the faint greenish glow reflected in her pupils.

"This is a report on a friend's research, in another department - incurable illnesses are researched there. Dr. Bailey has his assistant drop off a copy of his bi-monthly report as a courtesy, because I'm interested in his findings, and because the lieutenant lives in this building and it's convenient to do it that way. Specifically, I'm interested in irumodic syndrome research. Because one of my best friends might get it some day, and I'd like to contribute to the research. I hope to transfer from epidemic research in the near future to work with Dr. Bailey."

Kathryn makes tea while she listens to this, because it's easier than standing eye to eye; Beverly speaks as though imparting great secrets to her, in a near-whisper.

"It wasn't a matter of chain of command," Beverly continues, in a seemingly-disjointed fashion. "It was a matter of friendship. Because he was my husband's best friend. Because we were friends. I even felt guilty when he told me he - when I found out he had feelings for me, but I didn't. I suppose, if he hadn't been Jack's friend, if he had been someone I'd only just met, I might have tried - he's one of the most attractive men I've ever met, and I don't mean to look at. It's more than that with him. But I wasn't in love with him, and it would have ruined a good friendship to pretend that I was. I had to work with him. I had to operate on him - I took implants out of his body, I've regenerated knife wounds, I've performed his physicals and diagnosed minor ailments for him for years. I've written a paper on the Borg thanks to him, though that's largely outdated by what you brought back with you now." Beverly pauses, the cooling cup of tea untouched in her hand, and frowns. "Am I making any sense at all?"

Kathryn nods. "Does he understand all of this?"

"I think so. I hope so. It's not something I could discuss with him. He's not in love with me any more, if he ever really was. I sometimes think it was more the idea of me that he fell for." Finally, she sips tea, a cynical twist in her lips.

"I suppose if you did try to talk to him, he'd think you were implying something."

"It's funny," Beverly says, sketching a circle in the air with a fingertip, "about marriage - or really any kind of long-term intimate relationship. When men start feeling comfortable in a sexual relationship, they stop talking. I wanted him to keep talking to me."

"I never noticed that." She thinks of Mark, Justin, and wonders if that would have been true of either of them. Or Chakotay - her first officer had been prone to telling stories and bush-beating and speaking quietly, so who knew how much quieter he would have gotten?

"Are you staying here much longer?"

Kathryn raises her eyes. "Here in the apartment, you mean? Since I'm not certain where I'll go from here, I can't tell you. I'm still on leave, technically."

"Have you had offers? A promotion, another ship?"

"Not yet. There's speculation, but not from anyone who would count. Why?"

Beverly's throat moves visibly, and her eyes gleam. She puts the cup on the counter. "I hate to be this naked with one-month stands."

They both laugh, Kathryn leaning on the counter in giddy relief. Though what exactly she felt the relief for, she was not certain. The ice had been broken, they hadn't fallen through, and they made more tea. Beverly suggested a holo one of her assistants had recommended might make decent entertainment for a couple of hours.

Four weeks, and conversations about more personal subjects than recipes started smoothly. Details of Beverly's deceased husband wove in and out of discussions of former favorite foods. Justin and Mark flit through Kathryn's sentences in snippets of detail, but her father, never. Admiral Paris remains anonymous the few times he's mentioned. Beverly talks about 'him' as if she's mentioned 'him' by name and Kathryn knows who she means - and she does. There is only one starship captain widely known as assimilated and recovered. He was the first. The details of Kathryn's assimilation are still kept under wraps as the admirals go through her logs, sifting, looking for violations.

Beverly's apartment is as bare as Kathryn's. "Temporary," she says, shaking her head at the mention of more furniture. Kathryn now knows that her neighbor has been in this place for three months.

They go out now, sometimes in late afternoon on Beverly's day off, and Kathryn wonders if not for her if the doctor would simply return to the lab. Shopping isn't something to do so much as someplace to be; they move listlessly through racks of clothing and buy little. Antique stores they pass by without entering.

They end up on the beach, crowded with young people with beautiful skin and no scars, external or internal. Beverly watches them with yearning in her face. Kathryn wonders if that's child envy or youth envy, and watches her. Beverly notices at last and meets her eyes.

In the sun, her hair whipped by the onshore wind, Beverly contemplates Kathryn and her blue eyes are brighter out here. She looks and looks and Kathryn's throat tightens. This is a charged moment, for some reason, though she has no idea what Beverly will say.

"What languages do you speak?"

"Just this one. You?"

"Languages were never my thing. Unless you can call medical jargon a language. . . ."

Kathryn sniffs. "Or terms for esoteric spatial phenomena. I started out in the sciences, moved into command at my mentor's recommendation." Beverly looks up in the sun-seared sky at the pale half-moon hanging low.

"I was born on the moon. A Luna baby."

"Indiana."

They're back in the casual exchange of information, tit for tat, fact for fact. Kathryn is aware this is not small talk per se, but a nod to what passes for real conversation between two women becoming friends. She wonders if Beverly has ever known anyone so uncomfortable with this role as Kathryn, if this is an adaptation or a habit of someone else so solitary that she hasn't taken the time to learn what most girls know by ten years old. Like Phoebe. Phoebe never would have run from a coffee shop and left Will Riker sitting there, she would have laughed at her own silliness if necessary and hung on his arm.

"Corn and plains," Beverly adds.

"My mother was a Traditionalist. Also a mathematician."

Beverly drifts, coming back into her eyes again suddenly. "I don't remember what my parents did, not directly."

"My father. . . ." She can't continue - why, for God's sake, it's been years and she's talked about this before with relative ease - but the sympathy in Beverly's eyes tells her she doesn't need to. For the first time Beverly takes her hand, there on the boardwalk overlooking the beach full of youth in tight bathing suits.

"We left him behind on his orders," Beverly says, off into another mission. "We were told the Cardassians were working on a way to deliver bioweapons across a vast distance of space - it was a trap for him. They tortured him, and we left him there. When he was returned to us weeks later, he - we left him," she repeats, confessing her sin in the situation.

"The mission was paramount," Kathryn murmured. "He didn't blame you."

"That doesn't matter. Does it?"

"I could have brought my crew back immediately. It would have meant leaving a group of people to suffer at the hands of another species, however."

"The Prime Directive."

"The situation wasn't so easy. The Caretaker was bringing vessels from our quadrant to theirs - I destroyed the array rather than using it to get back. I stranded my people there. They could have blamed me or mutinied but they didn't. The mission can change radically, into something other than what you thought it was, but regulations are there to guide you, and principles. He didn't blame you - he was probably relieved that you'd escaped being tortured as well. I would have been."

A frown appeared between Beverly's eyes. "That's not much of a consolation."

"When I was part of a group captured by the Cardassians, I was but an ensign. They concentrated on the admiral. I - " Kathryn heard the bark of a dog and whirled, but it was a poodle, high-pitched, nothing to fear. She watched it catch a frisbee and race off. "I heard his screams in my nightmares for months. He asked me once what they did, wanted a report - "

Beverly's frown halts the bare-bones of confession. It takes a moment to realize she's staring over Kathryn's shoulder. She turns and faces a small group of kids. Got to be sixteen. Or younger. Thin limbs, thin chests, all male, all human, wide eyes, nothing but nerves and testosterone. It brings Mark back to her in a headlong rush - vulky boy, good friend, awkward manners later on when he tries to approach her as a friend-and-then-some. She hadn't recognized it then.

"Is something wrong?" she asks them. Three of them back away as if she's a toxic chemical. Two straighten. One speaks. "You're her. Captain Janeway."

"Want to play volleyball with us?" the other blurts, getting an elbow in his ribs and a shove from another friend for his temerity.

"I'd love to," she says, smiling graciously, glancing at the net on the sand not far away. "But I've got a schedule to keep. Thank you for offering."

They walk away, leaving the boys stumbling over themselves in gleeful awe. "She said - " " - jerk, why didn't you ask her - " "Who's the other woman?" " - looker, for an old - "

"I don't believe that I've seen that type of situation handled with quite so much grace," Beverly mutters. Kathryn wonders how 'he' had handled it.

They didn't go to that beach again. There were less populated ones - further away, but it was worth the effort. Nor did they discuss Cardassians in any way again, or torture.

Six weeks. The sun still rose and set. Kathryn still hadn't unpacked her belongings, except for the clothing. She dreamed of roses and sunsets, and blue, blue oceans. Of silence, long and deep. She hated the view from her apartment, longed for an ocean view. She had taken Mahler off her list of favorites and added Haydn. Symphony No. 94 in G major, "Surprise." She particularly liked the second movement, Andante. So very soft and quiet in the beginning, then a pounce of the woodwinds, then understated melody sedately stating the theme, rising in volume, to a less-pronounced pouncing of horns. Orderly, punctuated with surprises.

She investigates Beverly's apartment one afternoon. Beverly too has altered her settings to allow Kathryn easy access to her apartment, though neither of them asked or verbally gave such permission. She prowls through the rooms and notes bare walls. There's a scattering of toiletries in the bath, nothing unexpected. The kitchen has been modified like Kathryn's now, but that's no surprise either - Kathryn helped her do it. In addition to the coffee maker there is a small burner unit and a single pot sits on it. Kathryn leans over the made bed. Beverly tucks the covers down flat and leaves the pillows on top, exposed. There is a soft scent of soap, and of sweat, on the pillowcases.

"Computer, play Beverly's list of favorite music, in random order." It begins, strangely, with something foreign and alien. Kathryn skips songs until she hears something she recognizes. It's Tchaikovsky. While she stares out the windows the movement finishes and the next work begins - Mahler. Gods. Kathryn stops the music and orders the computer to substitute Haydn for the Mahler, and goes back to her own space.

As she eats dinner, she hears music faintly through the wall, and smiles. When Beverly comes over that evening, she stands on the threshold, for a moment seeming as awkward as the boys they'd seen on the beach. Then she's rushing inside, down the short hall that constitutes an entry, arms out. Kathryn doesn't have time to brace herself for the kiss.

Later, as they sprawl as much as possible in Kathryn's inadequate bed, eating a Vulcan version of stir fry Kathryn had improvised, she begins at the beginning, talks into the night, and Beverly listens without comment. At the end of the journey from gawky science student-cadet to captain of a vessel stranded with a slapdash crew without upgrades, major repairs, and a first officer who habitually smashed shuttles (how many, Kathryn hadn't really realized until with each crash Beverly's smile reappeared, only bigger than the last, and then the pattern came clear), at the bitter end where admirals sat in judgement and nattered endlessly about her, what should be done to her, or with her, and the counselors prying and her refusal to tell them how she felt - what business was it of theirs, when this was Starfleet and all they should worry about was how and what she had done on the job? - as she finishes filling the room with words and God, how angry she had sounded at some points, Beverly rearranges herself. She takes Kathryn's hands, fingers meshed, palms to palms, and covers Kathryn's body with her own. Off center, because their contours do not mesh, but comfortable once she settles.

Bone against bone. Flesh against flesh. Not something she had done before, not like this. Kathryn realizes Beverly is crying when their cheeks pressing together acquire a liquid buffer zone. She wonders if 'he' had ever thanked Beverly for grounding him. If 'he' had even deserved the gift of copper hair and soft, soft skin, the taste of her musk or the sigh of her breath along the ticklish nape of the neck. Deserving or not, he hadn't gotten it.

She wishes she could meet him with the smell of Beverly on her, flaunt it, perhaps lean across a desk and plant a chaste kiss on his lips so he can have the barest taste of what he's never had. She is grateful now that her first officer hadn't pushed the issue. He didn't deserve this, either. Did 'he' miss having Beverly with him?

She knew she did not miss her first officer. Not any more. Or Seven, who now smiled and seemed to have freed herself at last from the vestiges of emotional repression as she faced holocams with clear pale blue eyes that cried out, 'happy, happy' and brief embraces with the long-lost family she had finally met in person. Seven, whom she had defended to the admirals and scientists who wanted to study the Borg who would be human. Whom she had freed from such chains.

She hadn't been freed yet. The rest of her crew was scattered to the winds, but she remained, awaiting final judgement. Beverly sighs and places a kiss on Kathryn's temple, gently, with the precision of a surgeon. Kathryn doesn't care how long she must wait.

Eight weeks. Beverly stops mentioning 'him' so often, and helps Kathryn move her still-packed things into Beverly's apartment.

Kathryn's days became rambles, running together like droplets of water falling in a stream. Beverly coming home defined the starting of time, her departure in the morning the ending of it. In between, there were books Kathryn hadn't read, holos she hadn't seen, neighborhoods of San Francisco she hadn't walked in. She watches children at play sometimes and tries to remember being a child. She remembers Naomi and the Borg children, tries to think of them playing in the jungle gyms and scaled-down starship models complete with crawl-holes and an improbable ladder that kids climb to sit in treehouse-like nacelles. The surreal nature of these imaginings drives her to industrial neighborhoods.

Beverly takes a week off, and on the first evening Kathryn decides they are going visiting. The closest friends are Tom Paris and his wife and child, so she takes Beverly upstairs, noting with great pleasure that her companion greets the couple with dignity and a smile, unflinching when Tom and B'Elanna exchange a single surprised glance. Tom insists they stay for a while. The dinner is good - Tom has been experimenting, B'E has little patience with cooking - and the conversation flows easily. Tom has taken a job piloting, of course, and B'Elanna is working on acquiring an engineering position with the same company. The baby is happy and healthy; Beverly coos and makes exaggerated faces at her to get her to giggle. By the time they leave, the parents have drafted them to babysit in two weeks, while arrangements for a house are finalized and the moving takes place. Tom promises another home-cooked meal at the new house for their trouble.

Beverly wants to see Indiana. Kathryn thinks of her mother, nods, and within two hours they are on her mother's doorstep, bags in hand, and Gretchen is openly shocked for all of a minute before recovering and pulling them inside. And then Kathryn is shocked to hear her mother boldly talking Starfleet and family, about Edward Janeway and her two rebellious daughters, and Beverly casually tosses out Jack Crusher. The two of them are suddenly knee-deep in commiseration over being widowed. Kathryn remembers Justin and settles at the table to endure. Her silence seems to alert the other two, they exchange a look, and in a feat of curious synergy both extend a hand to touch Kathryn's arm.

This is the house she came to after the loss of her father and Justin cut her down. This is where she grew up dreaming of Starfleet and science. And now her mother is leaning across the table patting her wrist, and her lover has snaked a possessive hand around her arm, both of them silent in their anxiety. It strikes her then how foreign Beverly is, how bright and different from anyone else who has affected her so deeply, and how easily she had decided to bring her here. She burns intensely in this Traditionalist kitchen, her Beverly.

It strikes her that Beverly is also unafraid of Gretchen's scrutiny. If Kathryn moves, this tableau will be broken, and she is not certain of how she will react when that happens, but does not want tears.

Beverly leaves her hand where it is. "Do you have chamomile?"

"Oh - I'm sorry, no, but I might have some mint left. Or coffee, or water?" Kathryn's mother rises and the moment is broken. Coffee is good busy work for her, and while she is occupied Beverly leans in to press her nose alongside Kathryn's, cheek to cheek and sharing a breath before parting. Kathryn hears a quickly-stifled inhalation - Gretchen saw. But brings the coffee for them with a smile, offering cream and sugar, touching Beverly's shoulder as she passes behind them on her way to fetch it.

When it becomes late, Gretchen takes them upstairs and carries their bags for them, dropping them both in Kathryn's old room. They sleep spooned in a cocoon of blankets and listen to crickets and the low calls of night birds that Kathryn identifies for Beverly.

In the morning Phoebe arrives, apparently summoned by Gretchen last night in a clandestine comm call, and in her company is a pleasant young man named Phil. Neither of them are surprised by Beverly's presence, and Phil turns out to be a neurologist. Phoebe and Kathryn share a smile while a discussion about the differences between human neurology and that of similar non-humans which Phil had not treated but had studied.

They leave Indiana the following day. The rest of the vacation is spent on an island near the equator. When Kathryn asks about Wesley, Beverly finally explains about the Traveler and Tau Alpha C, in clipped tones.

Kathryn reciprocates with the story of the salamanders, which she had previously omitted from any account she had provided to anyone save the committee that had reviewed her logs. She tells Beverly while lying on the beach staring at the star-studded blackness overhead. Afterward they are silent, even after returning to their rented cabana on the water.

The remainder of the vacation passes too quickly, and they return to San Francisco. The first thing on the wall of Beverly's apartment, ever, is a souvenir of their trip. The holo-frame displays pictures of them, changing at random intervals. The evening before Beverly is due to return to work, they slowly uncrate Kathryn's belongings, get a good start on what's left of Beverly's still-packed souvenirs of many worlds and many experiences. Among them are pictures of her friends aboard the Enterprise. She chews her lip and puts them in the living room, on the wall furthest from the bedroom.

The following evening, they eat dinner with Hadyn playing. Beverly eats like someone who habitually eats while working, with quick stabs of the fork and eyes on things other than the plate. Meals are quick and economical things for them. Beverages are not.

"I haven't seen that lieutenant with another report," Kathryn notes idly over coffee while Beverly settles on the sofa with her cup of tea and a padd. It's the wrong thing to say. Beverly's shoulders stiffen. Kathryn considers going to massage the tension out of them, or at least apologizing, but doesn't.

"You won't see him again. They found a therapy for irumodic that guarantees an eighty percent improvement, and they're getting closer to a complete cure - anything I might contribute would be anticlimactic." A pause. "Plus, I think he found a position on a starship somewhere. Which reminds me, have they offered you anything?"

Kathryn's breath catches audibly. At Beverly's curious glance, she shrugs. "I don't think I'll be in space again unless I'm being a tourist. It doesn't sound promising."

Beverly watches her as she comes to sit down. "Do you want to go back? Command a ship again?" Her expression is sober, not sympathetic but not unkind.

"I thought once that I would die in space. That I'd make such a career of it that I'd never come back to ground. Later, I thought I would be killed in the Delta Quadrant trying to get my crew home."

"It was an heroic deed, getting them home," Beverly says unexpectedly. "The media has that much right."

Kathryn nods. "I did die in space. Getting them home. They think I wanted to come home, too - I could tell, from the way they were. But I came home a different person. How could I not?"

"If the cadets only knew," Beverly whispers.

Kathryn watches the doctor's profile against the backdrop of dusk filtering through the windows. Beverly is paler than usual, her hair swept back from her face, lines etched around her mouth and eyes as the shadows deepen around them.

"If the cadets only knew what happens to starship captains," Beverly says, shaking her head. "I thought about command. Took the bridge test. I've never shirked my duty, never backed down. I watched things happen to the captain and fixed whatever physical damage was inflicted, and then you. . . . And I wonder why I ever thought I could manage it, knowing how truly frail and transitory this is."

Beverly drops the padd beside her, holds up her hand. Veins stand up along the back, her fingers are long and clean, her nails short. Kathryn covers it with her own and closes it gently.

"Beverly, you could have done it."

"Jack told me I could, once. That I had the strength, and all I needed was determination." The sob catches in Beverly's chest and is swallowed at once. "I used to think he was the smartest and bravest officer in the universe. Now I know he was an average, not spectacular, officer. And I was just another naive young woman with high ideals and rose-colored glasses. I thought I could be a wife and a mother, and have a career too."

"A lot of officers do have all three."

"We aren't a lot of officers," Beverly blurts, turning her head in a fan of copper hair to fix a rigid blue-eyed gaze on her. The hand enveloped in Kathryn's tightens, becomes a smaller ball. "You don't believe you can have those things either."

Kathryn pulls Beverly's arm like a lever, applies her other hand to the wrist below the fist and flattens the long fingers between her palms. "Two out of three would have been satisfactory. But, Justin is dead, and Mark married someone else while I was temporarily deceased. Admirals are eyeing me with disfavor. It appears that children and career just aren't in my cards any longer. At least, not the same career. I could find an independent astronomical project, I suppose, or barring any productive options, I could sell my sordid story and live out the rest of my existence on the meager proceeds." She is kidding, each word dripping disdain for the idea, the corner of her mouth twisting.

Beverly turns away unexpectedly, as if wanting to depart via the windows and looking for the latch.

"Beverly?"

The doctor pulls her hand free of Kathryn's grip and doesn't turn around.

"What's happened? Beverly?"

"What did you tell your counselor?"

"What - " Kathryn couldn't breath for a few moments. Beverly shouldn't know about those appointments, which Kathryn only went to because it was a condition she'd agreed to fulfill in the negotiation for her livelihood.

"He came to see me."

"I thought counselors weren't supposed to discuss their patients with anyone," Kathryn growls.

"He didn't discuss you. He asked me questions, about me, why I'd let you move in. He's the staff counselor, Kathryn. For Starfleet Medical personnel. Not your personal psychologist who popped into existence just to rehabilitate the legendary Captain Janeway. He took you on because he was the best available."

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I didn't know. But it's none of his business what you do, Bev."

"Of course it is." This tight voice is new. Pensive, Kathryn has heard, sad, and even deliriously happy. This is Beverly, furious but in control of it. "If I'm not doing well at work, it's his business."

"Why aren't you doing - "

"Because my heart isn't in it any more, I'm tired, the stress is killing me. Pick one and fill in the blank."

"How about the real reason?"

"Don't call me Bev." Beverly rises, stalks to the window, and stands nose to nose with her reflection.

Kathryn slowly revises her assumption of 'furious' as an adequate descriptor. "If they did give me a ship, I'd need a crew. Especially a CMO. The EMH did a fine job, but I hear he's doing very well on the book tour, and I wouldn't stand a chance of getting him back anyway. What do you think?"

"He'd probably jump at the chance. Who else would give him the job, especially after he appeared on that talk show wearing a Hawaiian shirt?" The words were acid on her throat, from the sound of things. Not likely the expressed sentiment at work. An underlying, growing suspicion, yes. And fear.

"I don't want him," Kathryn said, lacing the statement with anything but professionalism. The cup of coffee in her hand still steams languidly; she sips and Beverly whirls and catches her in the act. She raises an eyebrow. Kathryn mimics the expression and speaks across the cup. "I'm sorry about the job. Would reassurance from me help improve your state of mind?"

"What makes you think it's about you?" Beverly stalks toward the kitchen. She's in a robe, lounging pajamas, her usual at-home choice of clothing, this time in rich coffee-brown satin. The garments whisper as she moves.

"I didn't say it was. I guessed that my uncertain future might be contributing to it, and that I might be able to help at least with that much. I couldn't do anything about job-related tensions, of course." Kathryn rises, brings the cup Beverly abandoned as well as her own to the kitchen. "Unless you condone hired thugs? I could probably afford an efficient and cruel one. Backpay."

"No." Beverly accepts the tea from Kathryn and doesn't move away - good, it's not yet impossible to salvage this.

"I might be able to get through this yet," she murmurs, the coffee warm against her palms, the floor cold on her feet. She started running for exercise last week and still wears the sweats she had on earlier this afternoon. "If not, there are plenty of options. If I want them. The counselor tells me I'm making the adjustment well enough."

"You didn't want to come back. You said so." Beverly backs away, suddenly tight-voiced and tight-lipped. "They'll give you a deep space mission."

It's the standard assignment for captains they don't want in close proximity with touchy political situations, and Kathryn understands how she made that connection, but doesn't take offense. Beverly's right. If she does have a future in Starfleet, it will probably be in deep space. That isn't a bad thing to her.

"I can choose my senior officers if they do."

Beverly is as sharp-eyed as she is wary. "I can choose to turn down positions I'm offered."

This resistance is unanswerable without a better understanding of its origin. Setting the unfinished, still-warm coffee in the sink, Kathryn nods and leaves her there, goes to take a shower. She reads propped up in bed until her eyes tire of looking at the padd.

Beverly comes to bed while Kathryn is still awake, slides in without turning on the light, and eventually falls asleep, leaving Kathryn to listen to her even, slow breathing late into the night.

She doesn't remember falling asleep, but when she wakes, Beverly is close and facing her, fingers in her hair, and Kathryn leans to touch her forehead, her eyelid, with a ghost of a kiss.

They seemed to forget the unpleasantness happened at all - but a week later, after breakfast, Beverly says, "I could also choose to accept them."

Kathryn can't find the other half of that statement right away. "Them?"

"A position. On a ship." Blue eyes gleam, a smile widens. "Did they offer one yet?"

Something tells Kathryn that all along, there have been breaches of security - and calling it that is wrong, because if Beverly had asked, she would have told her. But Beverly hadn't asked, at least, hadn't asked _her_. It could be an educated guess, given the last segment of this conversation.

"It's larger than _Voyager_. She's an Enforcer-class vessel."

Beverly's eyes glimmer and become reflective pools. "Isn't that a battle ship?"

"I struck a few blows against the Borg. They want to send me back out there again, to strike a few more." Kathryn shakes her head. "I don't know. I hoped for a science vessel. There's a lot of galaxy out there to study, and anyone can yell 'fire' and 'raise shields.'"

"So tell them what you want. How could they refuse?"

"They could, and they should, if I'm cashing in on The Famous Janeway Image to get what I want."

"Why not? You're not going to use it for anything else," Beverly snaps, slinging her hair out of her face.

"I don't intend to use it. At all. I'm not the heroic captain they talk about in the news, I'm not the psychotic loner the admirals wanted to make me out to be - I'm a good captain. I made mistakes, I compromised, I even broke regulations, but I had a responsibility to my crew - I put them out there and I brought them back! I had no backup! No safe haven, no starbases to fix everything that broke! I did exactly what I had to do, no more, and if the media wants - "

"Forget the media! What about me?" Beverly springs, and the fork skitters across the bare floor, and the teacup crashes and puddles and goes to pieces at her feet. A triangle of white china rests between her big and secondary toes, and a wave of remembered taste returns to Kathryn's mouth, which knows those toes. Beverly's fingers tighten around Kathryn's wrist as she bends forward, the table indents her robe and belly, the startling blue eyes flashing in her pale face.

"Let go of me," Kathryn intones. The words pry fingers free. The marks they made are fading rapidly, and Kathryn doesn't rub them as reflex would dictate. She doesn't take her eyes off Beverly's face.

It isn't any healthy emotional state that's driving the woman whose body Kathryn knows intimately, whose mind she thought she knew well after three months of near-constant association, and this disturbs her, brings to fruition the inkling of something wrong that has been in her thoughts for a week now. Little things have begun to add up to bigger things, in a mind that has puzzled over the behavior of aliens, the tactics of battle, the behavior of crew, the analysis of damaged systems in engineering.

Beverly rises and finishes getting ready for work. After she leaves, Kathryn also gets ready. She has a mission.

The receptionist tries to stop her, but her shock at Kathryn storming the office she had so reluctantly visited resulted in a hesitation, and at a walk Kathryn makes it past her easily. The door hisses open in her path. In the chair which she has frequented since the return from the Delta Quadrant, a familiar head turns, and eyes full of blue pathos meet hers.

"I'm sorry, this is a private session," the counselor announces in an over-loud voice. "You'll have to leave."

Kathryn ignores him and comes to stand next to the chair. Beverly grips the arms of it, leans away, and starts to rise. "No," Kathryn orders, pushing her shoulder then gripping it. "I'd like to join you. It's important to me."

"How did you know I was here?" Beverly whispers.

"I didn't. I came to demand an explanation of why Kenneth here shared information he shouldn't have - that I was also his patient and that I talked about you." She still recalls how to glare. He flushes and fidgets.

"I owe you an apology for that," he replies. Clears his throat. "Thank you, Melanie." After the receptionist backs out, he continues. "Beverly was referred to me, and in talking with her, I realized that she was the woman you kept mentioning. That there are issues for her to confront that would directly affect her relationship with you, and that she wasn't telling you anything about it. The actual confession was a mistake - I slipped up in session. But it may have been a fortuitous one, if it was what it took to get both of you in this room together."

Beverly's face is red, and she drags at her hair with her fingers and rubs her neck. Her restless eyes rest on Kathryn for a few seconds at a time.

Kathryn dragged the other chair from a corner and took a seat. "Beverly. I'd like to stay. Please."

Beverly's lips part and a tear overbalances and slides from lashes to cheek. "All right," she says, exhaling.

"We will be," Kathryn tells her. She turns a smile on the psychologist she's harried and frustrated for weeks, a certain teasing lilt returning to her voice after long absence. "Despite the better efforts of Kenneth, here."

"I think so," Kenneth replies amiably as he matches the smile.

Beverly swallows. Kathryn thinks she knows some of the reasons for this, but continues to smile and pulls Beverly's hand from the arm of the chair.

The following day, Kathryn has a meeting. She puts on her last pip and checks her reflection. This is a new uniform, and it's all right. Just different than what she was used to before.

Beverly has already left for work. Last night they drank wine and sang off-key, giddy with revelation and reassurance. Kathryn picks up the empty bottle from where Beverly had spun it round and round in an exclusive game of spin-the-bottle and placed it in the center of the table - it needed a flower in it, perhaps a rose or a lily. Something with a long stem.

The annunciator goes off. Perhaps Tom, she remembers with a start - the babysitting. When was that supposed to happen? Any day now.

She checks, but it isn't Tom. She's fairly certain the bald man must be 'him.' It's confirmed as the door slides open and she meets his eyes. She expected him to be taller.

"Hello, Captain," she says, smiling. "I wasn't expecting you."

"I was expecting Dr. Crusher." He glances left. "I must have the wrong door."

"Oh, no. But you've missed her - she left for work already. And unless you're on the list they keep at the desk, you won't get in there. You should probably call her. If you'd like to use our comm. . . ." She gestures over her shoulder vaguely.

The surprise, and a few other things, play over his patrician features and vanish again. "No, that's all right, I had only an hour. . . . I intended to ask her - I'm sorry, excuse me."

"It's quite all right. Captain Kathryn Janeway," she says, holding out a hand, forcing him to acknowledge her. Like a gentleman, he reciprocates with an introduction of his own and a firm hand-grasp. "It's a pleasure and an honor, sir."

"Likewise. I've heard quite a bit about your escapades. Mr. Ayala has been keeping the rest of the junior officers entertained over poker, since he came aboard."

"I'm glad to hear the recommendations I've been giving paid off. He's a good man. They're all fine officers. Never could have made it without them." Kathryn took half a step back. "Would you like some tea? I think the water's still hot, it would only take a moment to bring it to a boil."

To her surprise, he smiles and nods. "That sounds good."

She suspends disbelief and serves him at the table, imagining Beverly sitting in that chair just an hour ago with glowing cheeks and laughing eyes. Quite a contrast. Especially in dress - imagining him in one of Beverly's satin robes almost made her giggle as she poured tea. She noticed his eyes straying to the wall to his left, where their vacation images still played on in silent parade.

"How long have you known Beverly?"

She turns the almost-disastrous mouth of tea back just in time and pretends it was a minor choking incident, coughing instead of laughing. "Sorry. Can't imagine why that happened. We met shortly after I moved in next door, actually. She came over to complain about how loud I was playing music."

To her shock, he discusses friendship with Beverly casually, numbering the years he's known her and what a good officer she is, what a good doctor. Genuine affection shows in his eyes. Kathryn sees what Beverly meant about attractive - something in his voice, its timbre, the emotion that somehow vibrates beneath it as if he's an expensive woodwind instrument in the hands of an artiste, and the intensity, and the approachability. This isn't the captain Kathryn imagined from what she's read of him.

Of course, they had her portrayed as either a megalomaniac or a saint. Who could trust such accounts?

He relates one of the times Beverly saved lives, and his life, and Kathryn recognizes it as one of Beverly's 'failures' - but he is immensely proud of her for it and imparts a broader perspective of the situation. The admiration is too obvious.

Pieces of puzzle click together. She has only Beverly's side of things, a very emotional and biased side, and Beverly has been experiencing the resurgence of repressed feelings. This quiet conversation with the 'him' of so many pathos-ridden confessions spins the kaleidoscope. Beverly had lied, not to Kathryn, but to herself - she'd been in love with this man, but somehow she had convinced herself otherwise.

'I wanted him to keep talking.'

He's a good talker, Kathryn can tell. She also knows better than to trust any generalization about gender differences. She suspects the real reason Beverly couldn't handle a relationship with this man had more to do with some complicated dynamic between them than anything else. The almost-smile that showed more in his eyes could lure you into forgetting this was a man whose battle tactics had been deemed worthy of adding to the Collective.

She comes to an epiphany as he raises his tea to his lips in a pause after a compliment on the brew. It's about suitability and timing. Regardless of the details, perhaps Beverly had some undescribable reason, some intuition that kept her re-inventing excuses not to push her relationship with him beyond friendship. Perhaps Chakotay had been another example of the same. The guilt at caring and yet not-caring came into play because of the indescribable nature of the gut feeling holding her back.

Another epiphany - he is still here. With her. The friendship with Beverly is extending to her automatically. Now he describes Beverly's decision to leave and applauds her going on with her career, even though his sickbay will never be the same. Beverly has important contributions to make and many people will survive illnesses that otherwise would have been fatal.

"Like irumodic syndrome," Kathryn says, using the only specific example that she knows. "Even though she wasn't in that department she followed the research and intended to contribute."

A shocked expression on him is watching all emotion drain away for a few seconds, his eyes go clear and his followup emotion, in this case touched affection, flood into them. "Really."

And a third epiphany, and she realizes, this is truly a friendship Beverly cherished. It needed preservation. "She said it concerned her because one of her best friends might be affected by it. I find it telling that it was only a possibility and she almost diverted her career into pursuing a cure for it."

Light shines from his eyes, and his smile returns. "Yes," he says roughly.

"Of course, if I have anything to say about it, she'll go into deep space with me. I'm meeting with the fleet admiral in a half hour - they're trying to assign me to a battlecruiser. Frankly, I've had enough battle for any six lifetimes. My background's in the sciences, I'd much rather be out in the Gamma Quadrant cataloging and charting, so I'm going to see if they'll see reason."

"You'll need to do more than that," he says, tugging at his uniform as if getting ready. "Captain - "

"Kathryn."

"Kathryn," he capitulates gently. "I'm going to see the fleet admiral myself, later this afternoon, but I'd like to come with you - put in a good word, if you will."

Kathryn finds herself beaming at him. "I appreciate that. You'll bring the wine for the celebration party when I get that science vessel, I hope."

"Of course."

As they leave, he walks beside her. Their shoulders brush in the hall. In the lift, he thinks, brow furrowed. The ride is long.

"I'm glad to see she's found someone."

She might have missed it in a noisier lift. Warmth floods up through her. "I think it's been very good for both of us."

"She tends to make such things more difficult than they really are," he continues, shocking her again. "Jack told me often that she confused the hell out of him sometimes, but she's worth the confusion."

"I don't think she's confusing at all." Kathryn pats his arm as she would a member of her crew, drawing a bemused frown from him, and steps forward as the lift opens.


End file.
